Post by @xenotar

Sigh, @alan. My comment is not "rhetorical".

I am challenging yet another instance of the rhetorical game of blaming Trump's undoubted personality disorders for the long history of American imperialism & exceptionalism.

Under both red & blue administrations, the USA uses its economic and military power to coerce other countries. Trump is just less retrained in how he uses the imperial tools which decades of bipartisanship have built and cheered.

@santi

@2legged @santi
I wasn't referring to the entire comment, which I think should be obvious from my reply. But surely 'Are you calling Biden a "deranged narcissist"?' was either not a serious question or an honest misunderstanding of my meaning, thus my characterization of it as rhetoric. If it was such a misunderstanding I withdraw the characterization.

While I agree that the US uses its power to coerce (if not overthrow) other countries, the scope of your remarks, while accurate, are outside the point of my post.

@alan You wrote of 'the risk if a deranged narcissist being able to say "cut those people out of the system."'

But the reality is that the first — & most significant — exclusion of people from the payment systems was Biden's actions against Russia. This was a unilateral action by the USA to try to inflict economic harm on another country by weaponising what should be a neutral technology

Sane unilateral abuse of power. So why pretend the risk is Trump, rather than USAnian imperialism?

@santi

@2legged @santi For the same reason that I didn't name Nixon. Trump is the person who currently wields that power. If his successor isn't a deranged narcissist, I'll use a more appropriate pejorative when referencing them.

But again, the topic of the post was identifying the specific threat and how we should respond to it, rather that a dissertation on the general origins of the threat itself. I don't think we disagree on that larger topic, but it's tangential.

@alan This is quite simple, but not understood So i repeat.

This power is abused by administrations of both parties. You chose to play a rhetorical game of presenting it as a problem of one man's ugly personality.

And you still have not acknowledged this power is a problem of imperialism. Instead you continue to fixate on personalities. You are using cheap rhetoric to misrepresent the problem.

@santi

@2legged @santi and you continue to persist in your attempts to hijack the thread into something it's not. Meanwhile I will persist in not entertaining those attempts.

I am not sure how to be more clear on this. In consideration of that, we're done here.

@alan You have been playing rhetorical games to try to personalise onto Trump a problem of the bipartisan imperialism of the USA. You are trying to hijack a structual snd ideological problem by misrepresenting it as a problem of one personaility.

Biden abused this power so did Trump. This isn't a flaw in a man. It's a flaw in America.

If you really are done with that game, that's a great relief.

@santi